


Hands

by EpicOfMe



Series: Have Some Hot Cocoa with Me [5]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 10:11:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10462455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EpicOfMe/pseuds/EpicOfMe





	

When you lose someone, a little piece of you goes with them. Sometimes, it's a little bit of your heart or your soul. Most of the time, it's both. But on rare occasion, when those little bits of your heart and soul leave you, they snag a piece of your mind on the way out. 

I remember what my grandmother was like before my grandfather passed away. She would tell us stories and push us on the swings. She would pitch the ball for us because everybody else wanted to run the bases. When grampa died, she hardly left her chair and never set foot outside the house. She would just sit there and let life happen around her. It was like the small bit of her mind she had lost had been the part that held her to reality. 

One day, when I was still what people called "a kid", she called me over to her side and asked me to look at my hands. I looked down at my palms and studied the lines and calluses if only to appease her and quiet her down. 

"What do you see?" she asked. 

"My hands," I said. 

She smiled and showed me her own shaking, wrinkled palms. "Now what do you see?"

"Your hands."

She smiled again and took my hands in hers with the palms still up. "You know what I see, baby? I see climbed trees, home runs, bike races, and unscraped knees."  
I looked back down at my hands, bewildered at the fact that she could see so much in something where I saw absolutely nothing. 

"How do you see all that, grama?" I asked her. 

She showed me her hands again. "What do you see in my hands, baby?"

I searched her hands like a homemade treasure map. I saw nails that had once shone with bright colors. I saw a scratched up set of wedding rings held together by a thin sheet of gold. I saw fingers that twitched and shook from lack of movement. 

"I see sadness," I said. 

She didn't smile then. She just sat there staring at her hands until my aunt came by later that night to help my mother with dinner and getting grama into bed.   
Now, as I look at my hands, I don't see baseball games or huge oak trees. I see pencils and pens, hundreds... thousands of sheets of lined paper. I see dominated mountains, hunted deer, ski slopes... I see skin rough from use, but soft with youth. But above all, I see...

A story.


End file.
